Apple Rumor: Multitouch Everywhere!

Multitouch is amazing. When I got to see Jeff Han demo it at Etech last year, everyone was blown away, but it feels like it’s a couple years off, right? If Apple could release it in 2007, they’d get to leapfrog the entire industry and be way ahead for a long time.

I’ve been waiting for a new iSight-equipped LCD display for six months and I’ve wondered why they didn’t release one ages ago, but if multitouch sensitive displays are on the way the long delay makes sense. Even cooler is imagining multitouch apps like iPhoto (imagine being able to throw photos around your desktop and sort them all with your fingers), Garageband, and iMovie (I could save a lot of time if I could manipulate the timelines by touch).

The multitouch rumor would also explain the previous rumors about 50″ monitors coming from Apple. A 50″ monitor seems insane to have on your desk, but if you watch Jeff Han’s demos, you can see why size matters for manipulating screen details with both hands.

Maybe it’s not so much displays as Tablet PCs. There’s all these rumors about a new ultralight mac, too. That’s my favorite mac fantasy, a small ultralight tablet with the flash memory and the long battery life and the wifi and the multitouch, and 3rd party apps. Please?

I was wondering how hard it would be to make both sides of a laptop out of screens and at least the lower one being multitouch. Loss of tactile feedback might be an issue, but there are a variety of possibilities for varying input based on application in use. Kinda like the Optimus Keyboard, on steroids! 😉

I can’t figure out how it’d be released. The iPhone or a tablet Mac is easy, but how do you get it on an iMac or a PowerMac?
One approach is a usb multi-touch tablet you plug in next to your mouse. You use your mouse and your keyboard, then jump over to multipad for certain features. Seems clunky.
Another idea is building multitouch directly into the top of a mighty mouse, or as part of the keyboard. Less clunky, but still clunky.
Making the screens entirely touch sensitive is cool, but even clunkier. I wouldn’t want to lean forward to zoom in on google maps with my hands. The scroll on my mouse works fine.
So I dunno. They’ll do it, and it will be cool, but there’s going to be an implementation I can’t figure out right now.

Man, I’ve been geeksturbating over the idea since I saw that Jeff Han demo last year.
What I want — and I wonder why we can’t get it yet (from a hardware standpoint, because I understand the driver stuff would be A Major Thing) — is a large-mousepad-sized USB-connected panel on the desktop. It’d sit under your hand, but rather than holding a mouse in your hand, you use your fingers on it, multitouch-stylee. It seems like something could be done with existing hardware, like the Wacom tablets that have been around forever. The biggest hurdle, of course, being the driver software. But I reckon even that wouldn’t be *that* outrageously difficult.

I think it’s pretty much a given that Apple has much bigger plans in mind for Multitouch than just the iPhone. It’s probably a long ways off, though.
I have a feeling that the next generation of Apple displays will be high-DPI, to complement Leopard’s resolution independence. That would explain the delays, and is much more plausible than the sudden announcement of revolutionary new UI technologies.